I just saw some unofficial thoughts that the planned German JSSs should be mostly dock-based in landing operations, have at most two helo spots and carry rather less than 400 personnel in addition to crew, in a package of not much above 10,000 ts. The Mistrals would be totally out of size for that. Maybe they could be jointly purchased for a NATO sealift squadron akin to the Heavy Airlift Wing (really just a flight)? Of course warships have somewhat more stringent legal requirements than aircraft as I found out when I investigated such constructions some years ago; there are actually two research vessels flying the NATO flag, but they are not warships. However, I think a solution could be found if Germany and Poland could find some additional partners.

Highly improbable IMHO, our current concerns are not across the sea, but much closer. Plus we have a lot of ongoing modernisation programs as of now and it will cost A LOT. Navy is on the bottom on our priority list, not to mention that neither Poland nor Germany NEED anything like Mistral class, the best ship for the Baltics is an aircraft. If everyone pays, like it is in case of an airlift wing, that could be okay, but will they?

IIRC the Canadians were planning to acquire this kind of vessels at some point, so maybe that's some way out.

The Italian Navy is becoming kinda obsolete, I read that they will have to replace a lot of ships in the next decade, but is the money there?

Italians are downsizing, they are buying some top equipment but in small quantities, so thir navy will have less hulls. We are downsizing due to economic pressure, and that wont changevuntil we get russian tanks in Bayonne

In fact the Italians are planning to replace their three old small San Giorgio-class LHDs with two 20,000 ts vessels by 2018-2020, and old CVL Giuseppe Garibaldi with an LHA by 2020. The Mistrals would certainly fit the first part, but I suspect the trouble would be they certainly want their own industry to build them, not merely refit them for their use at extra cost. I can think of very elaborate intra-European compensation schemes, but in the end you're merely pushing losses around. I also see the Turks whom I had in mind as a possible partner in the pool solution have already chosen the Spanish Juan Carlos type for their planned LHD and want to build it in their own shipyards, too.

Seems the French generously offered the Baltic states which are naturally most critical of the Mistral deal to contribute four fighters to NATO air policing of their airspace today ...

Seems the French generously offered the Baltic states which are naturally most critical of the Mistral deal to contribute four fighters to NATO air policing of their airspace today ...

Well, they might also want to show Central Europe how supportive they are, quite a lot of contracts are at stake in Poland for example, though I guess we'll go Murican in both air defense and helo deal anyway, especially the first one.

If Canada was smart they would buy one and operate with NATO and even perhaps a NATO air wing on it. But ship building is highly political and we intend to build 2 Berlin class resupply ships at 3 times the price and 5 years to late.

We're an island nation with hardly any navy left, aircraft carriers due to entere service with no airrcraft and now no maritime patrol aircraft. If an airliner went missing in the Atlantic our lack of capability would be there for the world to see !

The assessment of the respective sides is very worthy and scholarly, but in the end, in the improbable event that it kicks off in Central Europe, it's unlikely to come down to sheer numbers on either side. There are a bunch of other factors.

1. How far the Russians are willing to go - do they want to take the Baltic states and leave it at that? Do they want to make more major territorial acquisitions or Finlandise Western Europe? Do they just want to secure their borders?

2. What means are they willing to use? Europe for example is painfully dependent on sea trade. A few SSNs hitting LPG shipments to Milford Haven would seriously screw us, likewise cruise missile attacks on critical economic and infrastructure. Would they be willing to risk mass civilian casualties, even directly or indirectly?

3. How many munitions do the respective sides have.

4. The technological disparity between the two forces - in the recent unpleasantness in Georgia, PGMs were notably absent in battlefield use, partly because the Russians had retired most of their PGM capable aircraft. In the (rapidly declining numbers of) Tornado GR4, we have an aircraft that can take out 12 enemy AFVs in one pass in all weathers. There is no (AFAIK) analagous Soviet system.

5. The disparity(?) in training and quality of leadership between the two sides.

6. How far would the West go. A few B-2s and SSGNs could take out dozens of airfields, AD sites and command centres in one go across a vast swathe of Western Russia. However, how would the Russians react to strategic systems being used against them to deliver conventional munitions?

7. C4i - could one side get inside the other's decision making loop.

8. Readiness and alert level on our side vs ability to achieve surprise on theirs.

I also think that comparing only Euro-NATO to the Russian military is fun but ultimately pointless, sort of like comparing South Korea's military to North Korea's -- if the sh*t hits the fan and Russia goes for Poland or something, there's no way that the US won't get fully involved.

I've only taken a very superficial look at air power on both sides so far. At first glance the Russian arsenal looks very formidable, though I have no idea how much of it is really serviceable. Regardless, my point remains that ground-based air defense in the West has been shockingly neglected. Poland, which is one of the few NATO members to retain a classical heavy force, still has AD battalions in every mechanized brigade plus corps-level units, all equipped with fUSSR systems; the Romanians are similar though they have some Western gun systems, including the Gepards Germany apparently considered useless for the future. The Bulgarians are also reasonably well-endowed for their size. Everywhere else, mobile AD is mighty thin.

Most countries seem to have subordinated all ground-based assets to their air forces, including France, Germany and Italy. Those are largely either VSHORAD or semi-stationary systems like Patriot - already somewhat rare with a regiment/wing in Germany, Greece, Poland (?) and Spain each plus a Dutch squadron. There is NASAMS in Norway, the Netherlands and Spain, Spada in Italy, Crotale in France and Greece, Roland in Spain and Slovenia, but its all just a couple batteries each. France and Italy are procuring SAMP/T; Hawk soldiers on in Greece, Spain and Romania.

The French are naturally reluctant to forego a € 1.37/$ 1.89 bn deal, and obviously Russia has threatened to sue for damages if it is cancelled. I don't know the contract, but apparently it included an advance payment which they would certainly have to get back.

Oh, oh, I know! Since Russia has seized the Ukrainian fleet, Ukraine could have the Mistrals impounded, then give them away as compensation for the Western aid they're to get. When the French get to keep the Russian advance payment, that should make the ships quite a bit cheaper.

Salvaged from the ballooning main Ukraine thread to have it at hand if I ever find time again to look beyond current events. Russian formations include some divisions my earlier OOB suggests were reformed into brigades, but implementation of the new army structure is probably still underway.

I've thought in passing about how to re-orient the Bundeswehr more towards alliance defense again without increasing troop strength (since demographics more than all else speak against that, absent re-introduction of the draft) for a long time now. This is how the Heer looks after the 2011 reform:

The basic idea was to have six identically-structured brigades that could rotate through deployments. Most of the building blocks are there: eleven Panzergrenadier (two inactive), six Panzer (two inactive), six Jäger (one inactive) and three Gebirgsjäger battalions, plus combat support and service units. Airborne troops are in a separate brigade of two regiments (really battalion groups) which is currently forming a joint Dutch-German division with NL 11 Air Assault Brigade and helicopter assets from both nations.

Unlike in some other recent European reforms, the division level was retained despite the brigades being mostly self-sustained, in part because the German commitment to alliance defense calls for deploying a division HQ with two brigades, division troops and the capability to integrate forces of fellow NATO/EU members. Divisions also lead the sparse artillery assets (four battalions, each with one MLRS and three, one with four PzH 2000 batteries).

As you can see, peacetime structure does not really implement the "identical brigades" approach, mostly due to basing politics; all three mountain battalions are in Gebirgsjägerbrigade 23, but Gebirgspanzerbataillon 8 is in the neighbor brigade. The two Jäger battalions of the French-German Brigade would have to go 10th Panzerdivision to make its mechanized brigades identical to those in 1st Panzer Division, which tells you a lot about how serious the FGB is taken as a bi-national deployable combat formation.

My most immediate beef is the lack of artillery. I would

- replace two of the brigade engineer battalions with artillery battalions for a total of six identically-structured (though I would entertain the thought of equipping one "light" with the PzH 2000's little brother Donar if we had to buy new pieces anyway, which could support the FGB and Gebirgsjäger respectively; but I believe we still have all originally procured 185 PzH 2000 in stock, sufficient for 18 batteries of eight);

- disband two more to form brigade engineer companies, and make the last two division troops;

- return Flugabwehrraketengruppe 61 (Ozelot) from the Luftwaffe to form a divisional air defense battalion, and replace a Panzergrenadier battalion with a second, to be equipped with SysFla in the future;

- use one Jäger battalion to reform parachute regiments into four airmobile battalions and the slots of the two disbanded engineer HQ companies to reform regimental into brigade support troops;

- use slots of extra artillery battery to form heavy company for Jägerbattalion 291 in the FGB, currently a strange hybrid of two infantry, one recon and one HSS company.

There, I neatly re-arranged everything at least down to looking at company boxes. The revised OOB, streamlined for deployments, thus:

The following may be a little dramatized; I got the feeling "Spiegel" wanted to re-enact their glorious moment of 1962 when they reported on a lack of preparedness of the Bundeswehr to defend against the Red Hordes, got accused of treason by the government to the point of their editor-in-chief being jailed, and subsequent public outrage about that defined freedom of the press for the FRG. However, the concern about reaction time to any major threat to the Baltic states in particular is certainly valid.

Unprotected in the East:NATO Appears Toothless in Ukraine Crisis

By SPIEGEL Staff

If Russia were to engage in military aggression in the Baltics, NATO would be unable to defend the region using conventional means. An internal report highlights weaknesses in the alliance.

They were big words, spoken almost as if they had been written in stone. "Our commitment to collective defence is rock solid, now and for the future," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said more than a week ago, first in the Polish capital Warsaw and then, on the same day, in the Estonian capital Tallinn. Before that, the US ambassador to Latvia, speaking to local and American soldiers at a military base in the country, had sounded equally forceful when he insisted that the NATO partners and Latvia are standing "shoulder to shoulder."

Rasmussen's remarks were well intentioned but relatively toothless -- little more than whistling in the dark. The Balts and Poles sense it, and the NATO secretary general knows it.

At its core, the Western defense alliance consists of a promise that the 28 member states make to each other in Article 5 of the NATO treaty: An attack against one or several members is considered as an attack against all. The article states that if the so-called mutual defense clause is applied, each member state, to the best of its ability, must rush to the aid of the NATO partner under attack. Most recently, Turkey considered invoking Article 5 and requesting assistance after several rocket attacks from neighboring Syria in late 2012. Since then, two German batteries of Patriot air defense missiles have been stationed in Turkey as protection.

So what happens if the Baltic nations invoke Article 5? What if Russia attempts to destabilize the Baltics with threatening military gestures? And what if it violates its borders with Estonia and Latvia?

These scenarios are currently being discussed at length in NATO and at the German Defense Ministry in Berlin. According to information SPIEGEL obtained by SPIEGEL, a draft version of a comprehensive, restricted internal NATO assessment of the situation reads: "Russia's ability to undertake significant military action with little warning presents a wider threat to the maintenance of security and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area. Russia can pose a local or regional military threat at short notice at a place of its choosing. This is both destabilizing and threatening for those allies bordering or in close proximity to Russia."

Outdated Defense Plans

Six months ago, such words would have been inconceivable in a NATO document. But the crisis in Crimea and now in eastern Ukraine has called many certainties into question. One of these is that there will never be another armed conflict in Central Europe.

Military and political officials at NATO are currently drafting various documents, some of the reportedly classified as top secret, sources say. The reports will be submitted to the NATO political leadership in Brussels early this week, and the alliance defense ministers will meet on June 3 and 4, followed by a meeting of NATO foreign ministers. Even though the documents will likely be softened and couched in more diplomatic terms, they remain as sobering as they are alarming. They presumably represent the first stage of a lengthy debate over NATO's capacity to take action, its strategic orientation and the levels of national defense budgets.

Underlying the debate is an assessment of the situation on which NATO and government officials generally agree, namely that the alliance currently feels incapable of defending the Baltic countries with conventional means, that is, with tanks, aircraft and ground troops. When asked about the situation, a NATO spokeswoman said: "We are reviewing and updating our defense plans and considering other longer-term measures."

Elmar Brok, a member of Germany's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a longstanding expert on European Union foreign policy, puts it more directly: "When the Baltic countries were accepted into NATO, Russia did not pose a military threat. The alliance complied with the agreement with Russia and did not station any troops east of the Elbe River. But now that Putin's policy seems to be changing, NATO must come up with a response. At present, the alliance could not protect the Baltic countries with conventional military means."

That is the most important sentence, and officials at the German defense and foreign ministries in Berlin agree. It would take about half a year before the members of the alliance would be capable of mustering a suitable response, if at all. "We wouldn't even show up in time for the Russians' victory celebration," says a government expert, who points out that the existing, vague deployment plans are "all outdated." The German military's joint operations command is now in close contact with NATO, with the aim of developing an emergency plan as quickly as possible.

On the political side, however, the German government dreads a discussion of new Western military plans. Both the chancellor and the foreign minister prefer a more cautious approach to diplomacy in the conflict with Russia. Officials in Berlin say that actions that Russia could interpret as the West flexing its muscle would lead "directly to disaster." In addition, German public opinion is extremely opposed to upgrading NATO under the premise that the West must arm itself for a military conflict with Russia. Chancellor Angela Merkel is unwilling to consider an increase in defense spending, and she is certainly not interested in setting off an uncontrollable German debate over the notion of German soldiers potentially risking their lives for the Baltic countries.

At the Mercy of Moscow

This doesn't change the problem. If NATO, despite the solemn obligation enshrined in Article 5, were incapable of reacting on a par with Moscow in the event of a Russian incursion into the Baltic countries, the alliance could disintegrate as a result, because it would be breaking the very promise that justifies its existence.

German government officials wonder whether this is precisely what Russian President Vladimir Putin envisions. From his standpoint, NATO's expansion into the territory of former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact countries was deeply humiliating and a provocation for Russia. It triggered a series of real or imagined fears of being surrounded by enemies. In Chancellor Merkel's assessment, Putin would reverse NATO's eastward expansion if he could.

The chancellor has repeatedly stated in public that the security guarantee of Article 5 is valid. But because she too has played out the scenario of an attack on the Baltic countries to the bitter end, she is deeply concerned about the possibility of a dangerous escalation. Even Merkel doesn't know what Putin's limits truly are.

According to a senior government official, the current situation is reminiscent of the climax of the euro crisis in 2012. At the time, a breakup of the euro zone was considered as unlikely as a Russian military attack on the Baltic countries is today. Nevertheless, the German Finance Ministry took the precautionary step of calculating the consequence of a collapse of the euro. Today, the same considerations apply to the Western defense alliance, with one key difference: In 2012, governments and the European Central Bank had the capacity to save the euro. But in the Ukraine crisis, Russia is in charge, leading the Balts and the Poles to feel at the mercy of Moscow.

Russian formations include some divisions my earlier OOB suggests were reformed into brigades, but implementation of the new army structure is probably still underway.

In fact I have found that 2nd Guards Motor Rifle and 4th Guards Tank were reformed as divisions last year to uphold the famous tradition of those names, both of two brigades. The current conflict also has brought some other information about the current Russian OOB into easy access, though naturally some is contradictory. For example, the chart on top of this page shows a separate 5th Motor Rifle Brigade though Wikipedia says it is part of 2nd Guards Division; also a 39th Motor Rifle Brigade missing from the Wiki OOB of the Western Military District, which however has a 138th supposedly based roughly in the same region.

OTOH Wikipedia is also missing various formations showing up in the chart like two different 13th Motor Rifle/Motorized Brigades, a 216th Spetsnaz and 218th Reconnaissance Brigade; I left those out since I suspect the 13th may have become part of 4th Guards Division which used to have a 13th Tank Regiment and have no corroborative information of the other two, but included the 31st Air Assault Brigade which is specifically denoted as having been activated. The thusly revised table, with asterisks indicating maneuver formations fully or partially deployed to the Ukrainian border during recent events:

I have centered thoughts on the Baltic states as the most obvious frontline for some time, starting with a look at their own meagre military capabilities. First, Estonia:

This is the current peacetime organization of the Estonian army. The only real active maneuver element is the Scouts Battalion, which is a a motorized infantry unit equipped with XA-180/188 APCs, a total of 139 of which are on the books; 100 Bv 206 are also listed as being held. The other infantry battalions are however just training conscripts in peacetime; the Guard Battalion apparently does mostly the same, though it has an infantry and MP company each for security purposes. The artillery battalion has two batteries equipped with FH-70 and Finnish-made D-30/H63 howitzers; holdings of the former are listed as 24, the latter 42. The Air Defence Battalion uses ZU-23-2 and Mistral.

In addition to the regular forces, there is a homeguard-type organization called the Estonian Defence League consisting of 15 regional units of battalion to regimental size. Estonia retains conscription and used to have a rather ambitious mobilization plan to form

- four infantry brigades

- three artillery and air defence battalions each

- two engineer and CSS battalions each

- two scout, anti-tank and signal companies each

in wartime, supposedly incorporating homeguard personnel. Estnian Wiki instead speaks of two or three of each type (six or nine infantry battalions), which might be in reference to a reorganization planned after the 2008 war in Georgia, supposed to be implemented from the second half of this year and finished by 2018. As far as Google Translate tells me, this will abolish the defense districts and establish two brigades in peacetime, one in the North based on current 1st Infantry Brigade, and a 2nd in the South centered around the Kuperjanov (and likely including the Viru) Infantry Battalion.

They have also been looking for new equipment and are currently in negotiations with the Netherlands about purchase of 44 CV 9035 in 2015; an interest in Dutch PzH 2000 and possibly Fenneks has also been reported as well as in actual tanks, though the latter seems to be particularly doubtful due to cost. That goes even more for recent reports that they are thinking of getting an actual air force with some Gripen; earlier they were looking at getting NASAMS, which seems a much more sensible air defense capability for them. The navy, currently running three British Sandown-class minehunters and some support vessels, wants some fast multirole patrol boats.

Purchase of CV 9035 would seem to make them a good partner for the Danish in case of NATO reinforcements under MNC Northeast logistics-wise.